


The Burning Embers of Guilt: The Times That Try the Soul

by LibertyKingdom



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibertyKingdom/pseuds/LibertyKingdom
Summary: Abraham Woodhull is attacked by the Queen's Rangers and Anna is left to bare witness.





	

A thousand times she had mentally prepared herself for this day. Yet, somehow she had never imagined it would truly come. Here it was, more crushing and terrifying than anything her wildest visions could concoct. Only a deranged sadist could even design that special hellish brand of excruciatingly gruesome torment.

The shout intended to forewarn Abe of Simcoe's attack, pushes past her lips too late to be of help. She is immediately trapped in the arms of a Queen's Ranger. One she had never quiet bothered to learn the name of. The brunette struggles against the unforgivingly tight embrace, longing to fly to her dearest friend's side. She watches as Abe slips to the ground with a grass-muted thud.

"ABRAHAM!!!!!" His name is cried out in the shrillest most frantic octave that the brunette can muster. She already knows her efforts will prove to be futile. Still she can not bring herself to readily relinquish the power of control over the situation. 

She can barely hear the venomous words spoken by both men. Anna can only observe Abraham lying and writhing in pain below the insane auburn haired Captain, who was wielding a very sharp bayonet in his hands.

"NOOOO, CAPTAIN SIMCOE!!! PLEASEEEE!!!" His head snaps up at the sound of her outcry, he turns his head to face her. "JOHN.... DON'T...." comes her remorseful addition.

"I'll be with you in a moment M'lady. But first, this man must die. He is Culper's helper," comes his awkwardly well-mannered but seething reply.

The hairs on the back of Anna's neck stand on end as she is helplessly forced to watch the brutality of violence that erupts from the man. A scarlet tide stains his hands and rather than finishing Abraham off, Simcoe's more diabolical plan is to let Abraham suffer, twitching and gasping for air until his body gives out.

"You may release her, ensign," comes his cold calculating command. He is not so insensitive that he would refuse Anna the opportunity to say goodbye before Woodhull would surely die.

Anna flings herself across the distance and drops to her knees at Abraham's side. The brunette finds herself retching at the sheer amount of blood that seemed to pool around him in reckless abandon. She gingerly pulls his head and wounded body into her arms. He tries to speak but she tearfully silences him. "T.....this be al.....all my.....my fault...... I.... I talked you into this, Abraham. I.... I'll.. n....never for....forgive myself for this....."Anna sputtered between heavily wracking sobs that started to bubble their way out of her chest, the way fizz does a shaken can of soda. I should have n.....never ta....talked you into this......" The brunette bows her head bringing her nose and lips to kiss his salty tear-covered cheek.

Funny how in his final moments, she was with him and his father, wife, and son were blissfully oblivious of his tumultuous and slow demise. "I.....I want y.....you to....to know I...forgive you. OH GOD, I forgive you..... I.... I know what I said in that letter....b....but I be wrong. And....and I....I love you....." she ghosts a kiss over his heavily quivering lips.

His body suddenly seizes, given into violent shaking for a few moments. His rasping gasp for air have this frighteningly irksome, strangulating hiccup like sounds to them. "No.....no....no.... pl....please....." Anna beseechingly implores. Her doleful hues of maple-syrup and honey swell with an ocean of tears, which slowly starts to leak down the gentle curves and slopes of her face.

And in the time it takes a bird to flutter its wings, Abraham's slender figure grows eerily silent, the blood ceasing its magnificent flow from his chest. Anna is left clutching the body of her dead fiend... a married man, nonetheless. Pools of priceless scarlet steeped into the very fabric of her dress and staining the brunette's furiously trembling hands.

Her face turns a ghastly paler as if, she was to blend in with the drifting waves of the heavy mist that rolls off the Sound in the early morning hours. The light vanishes from her eyes, replaced by a brooding dark shell. The color, a shade three or four variations lighter than coal black. Poisonous intentions of getting revenge swept into her heart with the roaring current of emotions; the strongest of them being overwhelming grief, which successfully stole control.

Stunned, Anna rocks back and forth, his limp figure lovingly caught in the maddening swaying motions. Hot blue rage seared through her every vein, scalding its way into her cheeks until, they alone, turn a devilish shade of over ripe strawberry. The tears continued to fall from her eyes in a unsettlingly steady stream. Her panting lungs desperately strained for gasps of fresh air.

The Captain places his large hand upon her shoulder. Anna quickly slaps it away. "Now, now, Mrs. Strong. This behavior is hardly becoming a lady. Farmer Woodhull is dead. There is nothing more you can do for him now. Take comfort, that I have helped neutralize a threat. Setauket is safe now," comes his pompous, self-righteous speech.

Narrow slitted eyes flickered upwards, contempt and hatred appearing in every marvelously black speck and copper coil. "Shut up! A.....And don't you dare touch me!!!" Anna viciously snapped, letting him know that her tempest of a mood was not something that he should be comfortable trifling with.

The broken brunette tried to consul herself in the fact that, he was at peace now. He would no longer have to worry about the war.... about the ring..... about her. Abraham Woodhull was free, like a bird from prison bars had flown heavenward.

Simcoe flinched slightly at the barbed-wire strain of her tone, but his hand remained on her shoulder. "Mrs. Strong I must insist, less you wish to be the subject of ruinous gossip." He was no longer asking her to abandon Abraham's cooling corpse, he was telling her that she had no other choice. The Captain realized she had refused his verbal pleas and therefore began ripping the sniveling woman away from her one time lover and friend.

"Come now, Mrs. Strong...." His muscular arms pull her trembling figure in. A torrent of protests are muffled in the stiff material Simcoe's green coat as she is spun about and drawn into his sturdily built chest.

The Queen's Rangers gathered Woodhull's wounded body into their arms. Anna is ushered away by the very man who had taken Abe's life. Her feet dragged and her gaze is eternally turned back in the direction of the somber proceeding into town, whilst she is escorted to Whitehall. Once again they were to be torn in opposite directions.

The colorful vibrance of Setauket drained into some dreadfully dreary shade of grey. The world just wasn't the same. It was crueler, darker, and colder. Once back in her room and out of Simcoe's reach, Anna felt at liberty to truly grieve. Her fingers endlessly traced over the thick clustered pile of parchment, which beheld all of the correspondences saved from when they were but children... all the way to this very week. She reread them all, seeking shelter in inked words- the worlds and adventures of two young and hope-filled dreamers. Oh how she longed to turn the clock back. To warn her young self that her heart would be destroyed. Anna yearned the opportunity to explain to the child that the world was truly harsh, that it is hardly the friend it often masqueraded as. She wished for nothing more than the earth to open up and swallow her whole. Yet, pray for destruction as she might, it would not come for her.

Mary, knowing how close Anna was to Abe, paid her a visit. It was brief. Her words kept to the point and offered no comfort; as could be expected, of two women who were considered rivals. They were nearly opposite in every way. She demanded to know how Abraham suffered in the end. Anna gave her a milder version of events to spare her from as much pain as possible. The news was received with a stoney air of silence as if, Anna had been talking about some stranger rather than the woman's beloved husband. The blonde haired woman's reaction both surprised and startled her.

"Wh...when is he to be buried?" Anna questions. Mary crossly studied her and returned, "tomorrow. But you be among those not invited to the ceremony. Surely you must understand." Comes her sharply worded addition.

Anna's gaze fell in an effort to shamefully conceal the tears which soaked the puffy and swollen lower ridges of her eyes. "Y....y...you're right, Mary. I do.... I do understand...." the words are offered up dryly as the other woman made her exit. Anna Strong was to forever be exiled, kept away from Abraham.... even in his death.

In the lonesome revelry and stillness of her room, all Anna could hear above the clattering thumps of her heart, were the spiteful words of Richard Woodhull. "This is all your fault, Anna Strong." His tone full of disgust and resentment. "All your fault.... all your fault...." the words repetitiously repeated, branded upon every stirring beat of her heart. She was the albatross, the harbinger of his untimely destruction. The belief clung to every inch of her slender figure, the way soaked fabric clings to the skin after a long swim.

The night slid by slowly and Anna only stared at the blood that soaked the dress she had been wearing. Unable to gather the courage that was needed to clean it off. She clutched the fabric in her trembling hands, her doleful dark hues slowly shift to fixate upon the starless night sky in search of answers. Her mind was readily consumed with ..... thoughts. If only she had done this.....or if only she had done that. If only she had been fast enough to throw herself between the enraged Captain and her dearest friend. If only she had fought the ranger's grasp harder..... if only she had never encouraged him to help spy for Washington..... maybe then he... would still be alive.

It is well past midnight when her well exhausted figure slumps into a dreamless slumber. Her heart no longer believed in the magical needed to paint masterpieces of an imaginary life, a life worth living. It only knew the darkness and nothing more. Her fingers remained begrudgingly entwined in the bloodied fabric that was cradled over her heart.

Anna woke sometime later, groggy, but unable to forget the events that had transpired the night before. For the grim proof of the events remained in her hands. There was no primping, no time consuming effort to fix her rather dreadful appearance. Her messy brown coils were tossed into a quick bun and Anna mindlessly threw on the nearest dress. She didn't much care what people thought. Their opinions were already so low of her anyways. It didn't much matter what new cause she gave them all to gossip over. Besides the tavern-maid was caught in a slow current of time. Trapped somewhere between living in the present and re-living in the past.

Without stopping for breakfast, Anna took a walk down to the burnt shell of Abraham's root cellar. Her fingers pluck every wildflower she could find. Abe had been in the habit of leaving a path of them (when they had been in season of course) for her to follow to secret rendezvous. These were the beautiful manifestation of gestures...so long taken for granted, of which she had now been robbed. The pedals of the large bunch shuddered with her movement and the gentle brushes of the gale, which blew off of the Sound.

In his memory, the brunette leaves a small trail of wildflowers behind as she worked her way towards church. Outside of which, he would be buried in a plot beside his brother. Her maple-syrup hues lifted painfully, towards the hilltop structure. There, stood several figures dressed in grieving black. Cloaks and hats fluttered with the stronger onset of the wind, their movements visible to the eye...even from this distance. The force of the gale tears petaled buds from the bunch Anna had gathered and drags them across the great expanse separating her from Abraham's final resting place.

She, the lone outsider was unwillingly compelled to watch the burial from the town valley below. Whilst his father, wife, and child gathered around the temporary cross, that would in time, be replaced with a headstone. Their friendship and their genuine love to be forever forgotten under the a blanket of dirt and the haze of impropriety. Instead, the ones who had not loved him nearly as deeply, would unjustly be recorded next to his name in the town's history. It was their names that would be set in the stone beside his- not hers.

Her ears strain desperately, trying to pick up what the Magistrate was saying at his son's eulogy. "Sorry I pushed you so far that you died." Anna didn't think so, for such brutal honesty escaped the rather self-righteous man. In fact, knowing him, he was probably still scathing and ranting on and on about Abraham's audacity to continue surrounding himself with the likes of her, Brewster, and the Tallmadges.

Oh how the wooden splinters of shattered connections and separation burrowed themselves deep within the soft flesh of her throbbing heart. Gone would be the days of old, no more warm hands to hold hers when the wintery frost started to bite. The gentle brushes of his fingertips against her skin would soon be long forgotten under the chill of his eternal absence. The light in his eyes, his smile the heated caress of his lips, and the comfort of his arms were to become things of the past... only to be fondly dwelt upon then pushed back into the shadows of the mind. There would be no more secretly meeting inside of his cozy spy-den, no more hugs, or sharing cuddles. The days of conspiratorial friendship had drawn to a dramatic close.

Now, she was truly left with nothing- not even the hope that someday all the sacrifices made for this war would pay off. The cost had climbed too great. This war would hollow her out both emotionally and physically, until there was nothing but a shell of a person left standing. Anna knew defeat when it came collapsing down on top of her like a decrepit and crumbling building that a violent wind has the decency to push over.

In a foul mood she returns to the tavern and she pours herself an ale. The first swig washes away the bitterness, that like cacti's pointed quills, pierce the depths of her soul, till it resembled a pin cushion or pasta strainer- or more correctly a cross between both. The second, starts the attempts to cleanse the memories of their youth- which, had been spent forever entwined in each others company. To their parents delight and then later their dismay, Anna and Abe spent every waking moment with each other as if, they had been joined at the hip from birth. That is until their marriages briefly separated them. Then, by sheer happenstance they had been drawn back together like two opposing ends of a magnet.

She'd laugh and cry depending on the memory that she recalled. The tavern-maid mindlessly kept pouring several more glasses. Anna tried to drown herself in the foul tasting brew. However, like many drunks discover, there is not enough alcohol in the world to patch a gaping void left in the heart. Instead the pain is numbed for a brief expanse of time before it returns again. Anna quickly finds herself trapped in a world of perpetual suffering. Endless hours were spent caught in the nightmare of a life, to which, she was bound ball and chain.

They say that time patches all wounds.... nothing could be further from the truth. Time, it numbs the ache... but make no mistake, it lingers. For every now and again, at the unexpected recollection of some memory or another, the hole unpredictably rips open. Out of the chasm flows another relentless river of tears. Abraham's death was forever etched into the corridors of her mind, the visual of him suffering, branded into some deep corner of her eyes. His blood while long ago washed from her fingers, it would continually stain her conscious thoughts.... accompanied by the burning embers of guilt rooted deep within her chest. The guilt and sorrow remains a constant in a world that is every changing. The world was content with moving on. Even if she, herself, could not. The great depths Anna's love would not permit her too.


End file.
